“I had the idea that if I could not take my students to Egypt, Iraq, Syria, or even Turkey in the given the current climate, what if I could take them to the artifacts? Many, many of these are now housed in the great museums of Europe, not in their original sites.”

From Babylon to Berlin: ANES Museum Tour of Europe

“I had the idea that if I could not take my students to Egypt, Iraq, Syria, or even Turkey in the given the current climate, what if I could take them to the artifacts? Many, many of these are now housed in the great museums of Europe, not in their original sites.”

A standard part of all Kennedy Center programs is a required or “strongly encouraged” international experience, be that a study abroad or an internship. We encourage our ANES students to spend a semester in the BYU Jerusalem Center, but many of the other areas of the ancient near east are not readily accessible because of the tumultuous political situation in the Middle East. Since my appointment as the ANES coordinator in 2012, I have been looking for ways to get more of our students abroad. In recent years, we have succeeded in securing funding to send many of our students on digs in Turkey, Jordan, and Israel, which is the equivalent of an internship for those interested in material culture.

But digs are not for everyone, and the artifacts can be interesting historically and appreciated aesthetically without “getting in the dirt.” So I had the idea that if I could not take my students to Egypt, Iraq, Syria, or even Turkey in the given the current climate, what if I could take them to the artifacts? Many, many of these are now housed in the great museums of Europe, not in their original sites.

Thus was born the idea of an ANES Museum Tour of Europe. Museum and library work in the mornings and early afternoons would be paired with free time in the afternoons and evenings for more traditional site-seeing. More…